Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a major educational trend, as schools push to engage student and improve educational outcomes. While a lot can be said about the concept and place of PBL in contemporary schools, it is important to understand how to create, implement and assess it within the classroom. Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning: A Proven Approach to Rigorous Classroom Instruction (Larmer, Mergendoller & Boss, ASCD 2015) attempts to do just that, both from a leadership and practitioner’s level.

Over the course of Term 1 in my Professional Learning Team (PLT) at school, we have been analysing the writing skills of (all) the students in Year 7-10. This has been an intensive task, where we have had to analyse up to a hundred pieces of writing each, identify key components in the writing, plot these key components on a literacy continuum, and then identify the overall cluster that the student would belong in.

Reflection for students in assessment tasks is vital – too often they are only focused on their mark and not what they have learnt. There are many strategies out there, but this is the one that I have developed: TRUCKS